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An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967­-1987 QUOTES

An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967­-1987 QUOTES

1 " Nocturne"

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:
The house at night. Everyone asleep.
The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone.
A tray waits to be taken down.
The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,
a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back
chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,
the saucer with the thick spill of tea
which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room -- a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable. "

― Eavan Boland , An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967­-1987